So Sorry

http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&pmmsid=1772645
I was sent this link of both “Kramer’s” tirade and his apology.

Well that was the worst apology I have ever seen. It was as bad as the apology my fourth grade teacher made me give after I told Jenny “Look it isn’t personal, I just don’t like you.” And it was just as disingenuous. I didn’t like Jenny and I knew it was wrong but when pressed- and she did press the question that morning on the jungle gym- I came out with the truth. When she tattled I had to come up with something or risk exposure to my peers- Mrs. Dorsey’s home room class. I feared that with this proof people could confirm that I was a bad person and my elementary school career would be ruined. I couldn’t have that, I was a great student, I was in the glee club, I had perfect afro-puffs. So I lied. I wrung my hands, grimaced and made the appearance of an apology. I hoped that the sordid details of the incident would not get back to my mother. It worked. I skated by and everything was fine until the guilt of the insult set in. My reasons for not liking her were cursory. She was new to town, had weird grey colored eyes and dressed like an extra on Little House and the Prairie. She probably had a “funny” accent which in my town meant she spoke at a normal speed and didn’t add guttural Rs to every syllable. I don’t think she made a single friend and by the end of the semester she was gone from the school and from memory. Her parent’s company had probably moved them on to another piss ant rural town. Lucky Jenny.

Maybe it is too harsh to say that the Kramer apology was disingenuous. I do believe that he was truly sorry about dropping N bombs- out loud, on camera and in from of actual Ns. That is as much as I can give him. He probably made a lot of white liberals and liberal media types very uncomfortable especially with that “50 years ago… fork up the ass” comment. Nobody likes a Jim Crow reference as a punchline, no matter how truthful or well constructed. We, black folk, are unfortunately used to hearing people “accidentally” call us Ns. Whenever I hear it I try to remind the speaker that they should always check the room first and then, unless they are at one of their Klan rallies or a Bush cabinet meeting, they should only whisper the forbidden word the same way people whisper the word “black”. You never know when one of us sneaky Sambos is lurking around trying to entrap a man. The last thing you want is black people finding out that you hate them, its passé. How about instead of speaking racism each practicing racist could wear a pin showing their true colors. The pin should be recognizable, how about picture of a watermelon slice with a giant X over it or just a swastika. I like to know who I am dealing with. There is nothing more embarrassing than being nice to a person and even admiring them only to find out that they consider you to be a mere 3/5^th of a person. I can ruin one’s day, to say the least.

But really, is any of this worth all the media attention it is getting? What he did was not illegal, just offensive and foolhardy. After all what will happen to Kramer? Nothing. Maybe he won’t be able to do stand up again, but it looked like it was not going so well anyway. Perhaps he won’t get cast in another post-Seinfeld TV show that gets cancelled before anyone even hears of it. He’ll just to live in shame with his millions and wait for America’s short attention span to purge his outburst from its collective memory. In the meantime he can look forward to suspecting that there is urine in his soup, waiting hours for the valet and generally avoiding the public.